LOTR: Rings of Power - New Teaser

[Peelee]

If the movies integrated all the coll stuff from the books they'd be easily twice as long.

They were twice as long, it was called the Extended Edition. HEYO!

[Fyraltari]

They were twice as long, it was called the Extended Edition. HEYO!

Yeah, when I say "the movies" just assume I mean the extended cut unless explicitly not.

They cut Saruman's death out of the theatrical cut!

EDIT: Like, we don't need to learn that Rivendell was founded as a war-time refuge from Sauron or that the Witch-King is very likely related to Aragorn, in the movies even in the extended cut. And the extended cut also completely left out my bois Prince Imrahil and Loyal Beregond, the Gondorrhim everyman.

[Peelee]

Yeah, when I say "the movies" just assume I mean the extended cut unless explicitly not.

They cut Saruman's death out of the theatrical cut!

Yeah, but here's the thing, I think I'm funny.

[Corvus]

That makes 3 female leads that it would make sense to be Queens oddly demoted to something else. Miriel moves from Queen to Queen-Regent, Galadriel is 'Commander of the Northern Armies' and Disa is a Princess. Why no Queens?

Miriel is being promoted compared to her position in the book. Here she is ruling in the place of her invalided father. In the book she never ruled. She should have been Queen after her father died (and who was not an invalid), but her cousin usurped the position and forced her into an illegal marriage.

[Grim Portent]

The Book of Mazarbul doesn't mention the Balrog directly at all, but what we read of it is very fragmented. It does mention the drums in the deep, which are associated with the Balrog in some way, but do not seem to be beaten by the Balrog; they continue after the Balrog falls.

The whole Moria sequence is slightly opaque in the book. Pippen drops a stone down a well, the sound of a hammer echoes up the well, then later the Balrog attacks the chamber of Mazarbul, but only after the fellowship drives the orcs back. What exactly was hammering, and what that hammering was doing is never explained, leaving the whole thing delightfully mysterious.

The simplest explanation for the drumming is that it's how the orcs of Moria signalled that there were intruders, primarily to one another, but also to the Balrog who would likely be eager to have new victims that aren't orcs.

It might have also had a ritualistic purpose, and/or been an intimidation tactic. Orcs were no strangers to the ritual worship of Morgoth common in the East, and accutely aware and fond of tactics designed to demoralise their enemies.

It could have been some other nameless horror from ages past, but orc sentries and war drummers feels the most likely option to me.

[Dargaron]

See that's neat! And the kind of thing that would have been cool to find out in the dang movie!

Also, now that I've been thinking about it, I have another question. The dwarves that the Fellowship finds in the room are decomposed, looks like naturally so, not eaten or anything. So that must have been some time ago. But they recorded the goblins who presumably killed them, and then the goblins are still there when the Fellowship comes in. We're the goblins just more successful at reclaiming Moria? They were also terrified of the Balrog, so it seems like Moria was still a perfectly fine place to live even with the Balrog so long as you hid when it came around, or so.

Or is it just a plot coincidence that goblins happened to be present when the Fellowship went in?

At least in some of the art books surrounding the movies, (like The Lord of the Rings: Weapons and Warfare), there's comments that the Goblins in Moria in part based their armor and shields off the Balrog's appearance. The shields were intentionally modeled to look like dark wings, and the distinctive full-face helmets were supposed to have flame-like elements. Most of the supplemental material I've seen runs with this and supposes that the goblins in Moria actively worshiped the Balrog and stayed out of its way.